It’s always exciting when a member of the “Fogarty family” receives much-deserved recognition, and such is the case for former Ferolyn Fellow Maria Artunduaga, MD, MPH, MTM. Her company, Samay, was honored as the grand prize winner at the MedTech Conference, the largest gathering of industry leaders in North America, held in Toronto on October 16.
The first Latin-American company accepted to MedTech Innovator in its 12-year history, Samay took home $350,000 in non-dilutive funding beating 65 global companies. The award came on the heels of Samay’s successful trial involving over 400 patients at one of South Florida’s largest pulmonary clinics, which demonstrated that Samay’s novel acoustic resonance patch, Sylvee, accurately diagnosed COPD, exacerbation biomarkers and medication efficacy with sensitivities and specificities ranging from 86% to 100%. These results highlight the groundbreaking potential of the company’s technology for the diagnosis, management and intervention of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a progressive lung condition that obstructs breathing.
“COPD continues to be overlooked and underfunded, making this capital support critical in helping us bring our innovation to market,” explained Artunduaga. The achievement was even sweeter as she had applied to MedTech Innovator two times previously before finally being accepted.
A Breakthrough Innovation Poised to Improve the Lives of Hundreds of Millions
Originally launched as Respira Labs, Samay means “to breathe deeply” in Quechua, an indigenous language spoken in Latin America that helps connect the company’s South American team to its heritage. The company’s key technology monitors pulmonary volumes, trapped air, respiratory rates and breathing sounds to deliver actionable insights on how to optimize day-to-day respiratory health. It holds the potential to revolutionize COPD management by significantly improving patients’ quality of life and reducing health care costs.
“The market size is significant,” said Artunduaga, pointing out that respiratory diseases, which affect about one hundred million people in the U.S. alone, are expected to become the number one or two leading cause of morbidity and mortality within the next thirty years.
Despite this, the technology used for diagnosis of COPD events essentially hasn’t changed in 170 years, making it ripe for innovation. “Nobody wants to take the risk to be a first mover in this field; everybody wants to be a fast follower,” she said.
But for Artunduaga, it’s an issue that’s close to her heart as her beloved grandmother died from COPD, underscoring the need for attention for this condition. She came up with the idea for the technology in a moment of serendipity, when she began to wonder if they could send sound through the chest to make the lung resonate and see if it’s trapping progressively more air, which is often a factor in COPD deaths. “I wanted to find a way to predict flare-ups like those my grandmother had when she died,” she said, “without relying on the current costly and inaccessible in-office tests.”
Next Steps Will Put Samay on the Fast Track
Through this award and numerous other funding sources, Samay is now seeking a breakthrough designation and launching an exacerbation detection clinical trial in Colombia. Recruitment is ongoing. The goal is to prove that the technology is capable of detecting changes in acoustic resonance before the actual exacerbation is diagnosed by a doctor.
“We want to show that we can actually identify changes in those resonance frequencies, just like in congestive heart failure, and develop a quantifiable measurement or biomarker that can be used to detect and eventually predict exacerbations,” Artunduaga said.
“We are incredibly proud of our recent accomplishments and look forward to continuing our collaboration with networks like the Ferolyn Fellows, its mentors and others, as we strive to advance progress in this important field.”